Richard Rohr
Richard Rohr
Richard Rohr, O.F.M.is a Franciscan friar ordained to the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church in 1970. He is an internationally known inspirational speaker and has published numerous recorded talks and books, most recently Yes, And...: Daily Meditations, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, and Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionClergyman
CountryUnited States of America
If you do not transform your pain, you will always transmit it.
The Gospel gives our suffering personal and cosmic meaning, by connecting our pain to the pain of others, and finally, by connecting us to the very pain of God.
Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others.
Notice that whenever we suffer pain, the mind is always quick to identify with the negative aspects of things and replay them over and over again, wounding us deeply. Almost all humans have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) of the mind, which is why so many people become fearful, hate-filled, and wrapped around their negative commentaries. This pattern must be recognized early and definitively. Peace of mind is actually an oxymoron. When you're in your mind, you're hardly ever at peace, and when you're at peace, you're never only in your mind.
In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us.
If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.
Most of us live in the past, carrying our hurts, guilts and fears. We have to face the pain we carry, lest we spend the rest of our lives running away from it or letting it run us. But the only place you'll ever meet the real is now-here.
Pain that is not transformed is transmitted.
All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain.
All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it to those around us.
I've had the good fortune of teaching and preaching across much of the globe, while also struggling to make sense of my experience in my own tiny world.
Words and ideas work in the short run to get you through school and to impress educators and employers. But they do not work in the long run or in the deep run. We soon find ourselves separate and without wonder.
We looked too long for God and truth through words alone. The fruit for humanity has been rather limited, it seems to me - especially when I observe every day the extraordinary amount of unhappy and angry people in well educated and 'religious' countries.
Yes, the natural world is the first and primary Bible. We have not honored it, so how could we, or would we, know how to honor and properly use the second Bible, when it was written.